KYIV — Ukraine’s popular former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov has emerged as a new rival to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — but his call for an election is facing immediate blowback.

In a video address on Tuesday night, he zeroed in on topics he knew would strike a public chord in one of the most direct internal challenges to Zelenskyy since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He complained that corruption was undermining the war effort and protested about centralized and opaque decision-making in the Zelenskyy administration — for which he worked until only last month.

However, Fedorov’s unexpected appeal for the nation to go to the ballot box sparked immediate retorts across the political spectrum. Critics insisted such an election would be banned by Ukraine’s martial law, would be impossible to organize in wartime, would play into Russia’s hands and would sow division when national unity remains vital.

Zelenskyy still commands broad support as a war leader, and his allies pointed out that, regardless of public frustration, there are limits to how much he can reveal about the inner workings of the state when national survival is at stake.

Fedorov’s emergence as a rival to Zelenskyy was accelerated by his shock dismissal as defense minister last month. The 35-year-old built up a strong following for spearheading Ukraine’s success in using new technologies — from cyberattacks to drones — to damage Russia.

His ejection from office sparked immediate protests, with thousands of people taking to the streets, calling for his reinstatement or for Zelenskyy to properly explain the decision to fire him.

In his address on Tuesday night, Fedorov delivered a thinly veiled criticism of Zelenskyy’s management style, referring to his peremptory approach to hiring and firing.

“People cannot endlessly live in a state where they do not understand why certain decisions are made. Why some reforms move forward while others are blocked. Why decisions needed on the frontlines today spend months circulating through government offices,” Fedorov said.

“It is dangerous when society develops the feeling that the main criterion for an appointment is not professionalism, results, or the ability to transform the country, but personal loyalty to the system,” added the former minister, who had himself been viewed as a Zelenskyy loyalist for seven years.

Election backlash

A top official in Zelenskyy’s office, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about Fedorov’s move, had little time for the criticism that the president should explain his actions publicly.

“The president cannot just explain his hiring choices to the public during war, as those are matters of national security. And it’s his right to decide whom to appoint as his defense minister and whom to fire,” they said.

The official was also scathing about the possibility of holding an election in the face of devastating Russian attacks: “Let’s wait out another massive Russian ballistic attack and then go vote,” the person added, sarcastically.

Olga Aivazovska, head of Ukraine’s election watchdog OPORA, also stressed the practical obstacles to an election, insisting that there were “hundreds of scenarios and actions” that the Russians could use to undermine the electoral process.

Roman Lozynskyi, a parliamentarian from the opposition liberal Holos party and deputy head of the state management committee, feared the call for elections could prove disastrously divisive.

“There is zero positive for the country. Don’t be happy that you will have candidates in the post-war elections. You still have to live to see them,” he said. “People understand that elections during the war are in the enemy’s hands. That it will be a war of all against all.”

Even one of the leaders of the protest movement, war veteran Dmytro Koziatysnkyi, said he didn’t want to see elections during wartime. “I am also very afraid of the disunity of society during the electoral process and how this may affect the course of the war,” he said.

Far from bolstering Fedorov’s political future, the call for an election could even count against him.

Economist Timothy Ash, who frequently writes on Ukraine, suggested the ex-minister had made “an extraordinary political error of judgement which some would likely use against him if he ever pitches in to run as president in the future.”

Volodymyr Fesenko, a political analyst based in Kyiv, conceded Zelenskyy had become accustomed to “acting like in business,” defined by “single-man leadership” and “quick decisions,” but argued that the president was hardly acting out of step with any other major international leader.

“When his critics say he should appoint professionals instead of loyalists, they sound right but naive at the same time. Even in the West, unless we are talking about coalition governments, such an approach does not work. Any serious politician … and especially in a country like ours, will appoint trusted loyalists,” Fesenko added.

Fesenko also defended Zelenskyy’s record in appointing senior officials. He noted that Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi, new commander-in-chief, Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, as well as new Defense Minister Yevhenii Khmara, all had positive reputations, even among Zelenskyy’s top critics in parliament.

Indeed, Khmara was confirmed in his new role to succeed Fedorov by a parliamentary vote on Wednesday, by 312 lawmakers out of 392.

‘People want change’

Fedorov is certainly popular. A poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology said earlier this month that 63 percent of people saw him as trustworthy — a score that put him second only to former military supremo Valeryi Zaluzhnyi, who is now ambassador to the U.K.

But none of that put Zelenskyy, who scored a robust 56 percent, out of the picture.

In line with Fedorov’s attack on a lack of transparency in the centralized state, another survey found dwindling sympathy for Zelenskyy using his powers to intervene over other state authorities. The poll found that 79 percent of people in 2022 — the year of Russia’s full-scale invasion — thought the president could override the constitution’s division of powers, but that had slipped to 52 percent in May 2026.

“People are placing all responsibility for the course of the war on the president. Because of this, the president feels the need to make all these decisions independently, which is against Ukraine’s constitution and legislative procedures. As a result, one person, the president, has a huge number of completely different tasks, incentives, requirements,” said Yurii Hudymenko, head of the Public Anti-Corruption Council at Ukraine’s defense ministry.

Corruption is also a hot topic, as Fedorov identified. Last year, Zelenskyy signed a law to strip Ukraine’s national anti-corruption watchdogs of their procedural independence, only to then backtrack on that decision when it faced criticism from the EU and protests at home.

Later, his former business partner and allies were implicated in a $100 million corruption scheme in the state nuclear energy sector — a scandal that forced Zelenskyy to fire his faithful No. 2, Andriy Yermak. Yermak was charged with corruption and is standing trial.

Several of Zelenskyy’s top allies are also under investigation for corruption, including former Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna, while watchdogs complain they still face tremendous pressure and surveillance when investigating top officials.

On Wednesday, Zelenskyy fired Iryna Mudra as deputy head of his office, hours after anti-corruption watchdogs searched her workplace as part of a sweeping probe into an alleged criminal organization.

Yaroslav Zheleznyak, MP from opposition party Holos, and a prominent Zelenskyy critic, said the cumulative weight of these problems would ultimately count against the president.

He predicted Zelenskyy would suffer the fate of British wartime leader Winston Churchill and lose an election during the tail end of the war.

“No matter the competitors, Zaluzhnyi, [Head of the Presidential Office Kyrylo] Budanov, Fedorov or someone else, I think we will get the situation like in 2019, when anyone but the incumbent will win in the second round. In this case, this is very much a Churchill story, when a guy who won the war got voted out,” Zheleznyak said.

“People want change,” he added.

Oleksandr Saienko, expert at the Center for Political and Legal Reforms, said it was possible to avert a political crisis even without elections, but that would mean shifting some decision-making back to parliament and other state authorities.

“The subjectivity of the parliament must be restored both in terms of the legislative process and parliamentary control. The government must become the main center for the formation of state policy,” he said. “The pause on reform of the judicial system and law enforcement agencies, public administration, must be lifted and people should get a real sense of justice and protection.”

BRUSSELS — In Europe’s fight against wildfires, eyes are turning toward the sky: not just looking for rain or water-dropping Canadair planes, but also for ways to exploit new satellite capabilities to help contain or even prevent new blazes.

Satellites and the images and data they gather from space are increasingly seen as a means of providing European governments and firefighters on the ground with more accurate information: to map damage and detect fires at an early stage. 

Such help is more than welcome during another scorching European summer with wildfires in France, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Approximately 600,000 hectares have burned across EU countries since the start of the year. Just last weekend, Belgium was hit by one of the largest wildfires in its history, in the High Fens nature reserve.

Still, this latest use of satellites is another reminder that Europe needs to step up its game in yet another strategic arena. After Elon Musk’s Starlink showed how satellite-based services could revolutionize everything from mobile communication to waging war, space technology for disaster management offers a potential avenue for Europe to compete.

Greece, a country that seems to be battling bigger wildfires every summer, was the first to act. 

In early May, a rocket of Musk’s SpaceX carried four small satellites into space with the specific task of helping the country detect and track wildfires in near real time.  It was a crucial step in the build-out of the “Hellenic Fire System,” which the Greek government boasted was the first national satellite system of its kind. 

The system was set up through European-wide collaboration, with the help of the European Space Agency, its Greek counterpart, German wildfire intelligence platform Ororatech and Finnish radar-based satellite provider ICEYE.

“By integrating space-based capabilities into our emergency response systems, we are equipping our fire services with the tools they need to respond faster,” Dimitrios Papastergiou, Greece’s minister of digital governance and artificial intelligence, said at the launch in May. 

The satellites that were launched before the summer were equipped with two infrared imagers. Those pick up the heat energy radiated by fires, allowing satellites to detect hotspots and gauge their intensity. 

The system is designed to “support early detection of emerging hotspots and continuous monitoring of fire behavior,” the European Space Agency said. 

Satellites’ role in gathering vast, real-time data and images can also help with other extreme weather events. The Finnish company ICEYE offers monitoring services for governments and businesses to manage both natural catastrophes, such as floods and wildfires, and man-made ones, such as illegal deforestation.

ICEYE raised €1 billion in new financing this year, and became the first company to get backing from the Scaleup Europe Fund, a new fund backed by the European Commission to help companies expand rapidly.

“If we want to be effective in managing the environment around us, both in terms of growth and development, as well as preventing or managing natural catastrophes, these sorts of space-based systems are extremely effective,” ICEYE CEO Rafal Modrzewski told POLITICO.

He said the company has been mostly focused on “managing” wildfires, but is now “trying to push towards predicting wildfires or at least detecting them in an earlier stage.” Modrzewski says a similar offering is available for floods, and for wind damage stemming from hurricanes and typhoons.

The impact can be maximized if Brussels becomes a coordinating “buyer” of those services. “Using space-based capabilities is much more effectively done on an EU scale through [the European] Commission than on a national scale in 27 separate nations,” Modrzewski said. 

The Commission is already prominent in helping governments and emergency services map and detect wildfires. The European Forest Fire Information System, which sits within the Commission’s research desk, maps both active fires and burned areas based on data from NASA’s MODIS and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3, an Earth observation satellite. 

Currently, data and images arrive every 10 minutes, but the launch of a new satellite from the Meteosat third generation next Thursday should speed that up — with images arriving every 2.5 minutes, improving detection and even forecasting of possible wildfires.

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A full three decades ago, as Bill Clinton turned 50 in the midst of his successful 1996 reelection campaign, he was sounding even then in an autumnal mood.

“I have more yesterdays than tomorrows” he used to say often that year, a wistfulness that caused those of us who covered him to puzzle. What’s with this misty nostalgia? It was literally true, unless he expected to live 100, that he probably had more yesterdays than tomorrows. But fifty is typically the point when people realize they are no longer exactly young. It is hardly an age that merits a self-conception as old. Clinton’s perspective, however, doubtless left him with an appreciation of the fragility of life. He never met his biological father — a traveling salesman who married five times and died at age 28 in a car accident, three months before the future president was born.

Yet Clinton himself has proved reasonably durable, especially for a man who had serious heart surgery at age 58. The 42nd president turns 80 today — at last at an age that amply justifies a more searching look back on life.

Rest assured that no one in 1996 was contemplating the possibility that the president 30 years later would be a man who is actually two months older than Clinton — much less that this man would be President Donald Trump, who at that time had already been famous as a real estate magnate and professional self-promoter for 15 years or so.

Above all, I think few people then were imagining that the country in 2026 would itself be feeling so old — or, at a minimum, so surly and so bereft of a unifying vision of the future. The very essence of the most powerful and divisive political movement since former President Ronald Reagan’s is expressly backward-looking — Make America Great Again.

Many of the habits that today infuse American politics — the ones that make it so remorseless and infused with indignation and disdain — were present in nascent form in Clinton’s presidency. At the time, those developments seemed exotic — there was scant notion that they represented a shabby new norm.

In the early days, this brand of contempt-driven politics often revolved around arguments about Bill Clinton’s public and private character. This was a theme of his 1992 election against George H.W. Bush, his 1996 election against Bob Dole, and it even shadowed the 2004 dedication of his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

I am hardly a Clinton intimate. I haven’t been in his company in a decade. At one time, however, I probably knew as much about his presidency — its animating ideas, its decisive moments, its distinctive personalities — as anyone who had not actually served in it. This came from six years covering his White House for the Washington Post, and another two working on a book that aimed to synthesize his years in office and take a preliminary cut at assessing their historical weight. In both journalistic and historical terms, much of this time was devoted to thinking about competing appraisals of Clinton’s character.

It is an argument without end in part because the positive and negative elements of Clinton’s character, the light and the shadows, seemingly flow from the same source: an intense need to win, to matter, to seduce, to prove himself in the world. Imagine if people around Bill Clinton in 1974, the year he ran unsuccessfully for Congress — Hillary Rodham, then a girlfriend but not yet a spouse, showed up in Arkansas to help — had been given a crystal ball to peer into the future. These people would not be surprised to learn that a future president was in their midst; His talent, ambition, and idealism were that obvious. Nor would they be surprised to learn how his campaigns and presidency would at various turns be nearly derailed. As early biographer David Maraniss documented, even then Clinton had a reputation for sexual vagrancy, and the patterns of heedlessness, deception, and hypocrisy such a lifestyle inevitably requires.

He’s been out of political office for more than a quarter-century — as long as he was ever in it, beginning with his first victory as Arkansas attorney general in 1976. By my lights, the years since he yielded the Oval Office to George W. Bush (who turned 80 last month) in January 2001 have abundantly ratified the proposition that the country could do worse — at key junctures plainly has done worse–than Clinton’s character or his record, the strengths and infirmities alike.

As he turns 80, and the country contemplates a post-Trump future two years from now, it seems to me there are at least four ways in which Clinton has prevailed in the great character argument woven throughout his life.

Responsibility

This is a place where my views have not changed much from what I thought at the time and what I think now. A paradox of Clinton’s presidency is that, however reckless he was in his personal life — culminating in the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal and Republicans’ unsuccessful attempt to evict him from office through impeachment — he was supremely responsible in his use of power and his willingness to take sober risks for what he thought was right. Yes, he would over-agonize on hard choices — on issues from trade to welfare to war in the Balkans. But at the end of the day — sometimes it could be a very long day — on big subjects there was rarely much variance between what Clinton genuinely thought was the right decision and what he did.

A good many of his policies are out of favor now within his own party. But the political and policy landscape he was navigating was much different than today. Clinton was a thoroughly political creature, but he was not an unduly cynical one — he was willing frequently to risk his political self-interest on behalf of what he conceived of as the public interest.

Persuasion

One reason Bill Clinton and his brand of centrist politics can seem antiquated is that the past generation has been defined by a whole different emphasis: the politics of mobilization. Under this later school of politics, elections are won principally by sharpening divisions and elevating the moral stakes. The aim is not to win over skeptics through the power of reasoned argument. It is to convince your own side that the other side is so repugnant in its character and aims that they should rally behind you and turn out in the biggest possible numbers.

Clinton would in most of his campaigns give a nod to trying to explain what the other side believed, and why he believed his approach is better. “I think one of the ways you win elections is by talking straight with people and giving them permission to vote against you,” Clinton said a few years ago on a podcast. What he meant was that effective arguments don’t hector audiences or assert moral superiority, or the other side’s moral iniquity. They invite or even inspire people to think about an issue differently.

In short, the politics of mobilization harnesses the power of contempt; the politics of persuasion employs the language of respect. Mobilization politics tends to deal in ideological and cultural abstractions like free markets versus socialism, or “traditional values” versus sexual freedom — the kind of debates that are especially potent at pushing people to decide “which side are you on?” Persuasion politics is more likely to center on the concrete human dimensions of policy choices — here’s what an expansion of childcare tax credits might mean for you.

You could argue which brand of politics is more effective, and for the most part advocates of mobilization politics in recent years on left and right have been prevailing. But it’s hard to see how the politics of persuasion is not a more inspiring expression of American character, and also more likely to resolve serious long-term debates.

The fight for power

When Clinton opened his presidential library in Little Rock in 2004, the late Peter Jennings of ABC News in an interview baited Clinton about a recent survey of historians that rated his presidency reasonably well overall, but second to last (ahead only of Richard Nixon) in “moral authority.” Clinton said curtly that the historians were wrong, adding, “I don’t really care what they think.” Jennings replied: “Excuse me, Mr. President. I can feel it across the room. You care very deeply.”

Clinton then snapped: “You don’t want to go here, Peter. You don’t want to go here. Not after what you people did. And the way you — your network — what you did with [Whitewater prosecutor] Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea of what that’s like.”

The new library had an alcove about Clinton’s 1998 impeachment and subsequent acquittal called, “The Fight for Power.” The scandal, the exhibit argued, was simply the Republicans’ effort to overturn an election they lost.

At the time, I believed this was mostly Clinton’s tortured rationalization for his own mistakes. Events since then, however, have swung the historical argument irrefutably in his favor. In the 1990s we spent months and even years covering such inane issues as whether the newly elected Clinton acted properly to fire long-term employees of the office that booked White House charter flights and hotels for the media. Now, Trump asserts the right to eliminate cabinet departments and agencies without congressional approval — and the stories often get lost in the rush of other news. There is not a credible argument that says Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Whitewater land investments in the 1970s were a worthy subject for ethics inquiries and criminal probes but the Trump family’s crypto investments and overseas deals while the company founder is in the Oval Office are no big deal.

Clinton was right that the attacks on his character were often simply not on the level—but a proxy for other agendas.

Perseverance

In 2000, as Bill Clinton’s presidency was winding down and Hillary Clinton was waging a successful campaign for New York Senate, there was a political skull session at the White House involving a trusted roster of aides and strategists. As one of them described it to me later, Bill Clinton brought up the elephant in the room. Female voters in particular, he noted, wanted to understand why Hillary had stayed with Bill during the sex scandal. The mood was briefly awkward until Hillary Clinton said good-naturedly that she wanted to know the answer too.

“Because you’re a sticker!” the president replied, jabbing the air for emphasis.

Actually, it seems to me, both Clintons are. Across many decades, they have stayed married, and stayed in the fight over the issues they care about—amid plenty of victories and setbacks alike. That is a kind of character, too.

These days, Bill Clinton’s public appearances are fewer. At times he looks frail. His skeptics include many people in his own party. Yet, on his 80th birthday, the main question seems to be less about his character than the country’s: Is there a pathway to a destination in which more people believed with him that politics can illuminate the best and most generous and inspiring parts of national identity? Clinton may be getting old, but that idea should be made young again.

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Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen lashed out at the Trump administration on Tuesday after Washington sanctioned two senior officials at the International Criminal Court over probes targeting alleged Israeli crimes in Gaza.

Earlier in the day, Washington had upped the ante in its campaign against the international tribunal by sanctioning ICC President Tomoko Akane and senior trial lawyer Abdoulaye Seye.

“The Netherlands disapproves of the latest sanctions against officials and staff of the International Criminal Court,” Berendsen wrote on X. “International courts and tribunals must be able to freely carry out their mandates.” He added that the Netherlands “fully” backed the court and had invited Akane for talks to discuss its continued support.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio accused the court of threatening American sovereignty, saying the administration was acting to protect its citizens from a “sham” institution and would never allow Americans to be “transported beyond seas to be tried for pretend offenses.”

Tuesday’s sanctions are part of a campaign Washington launched last month to cripple the ICC. The U.S. has already sanctioned at least 11 ICC officials and has urged the court’s 125 member states to withdraw from the organization.

The Hague-based ICC, established in 2002, prosecutes genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Its pursuit of charges against senior Israeli politicians on such grounds, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, against whom it has issued an arrest warrant, has been a particular sore point for the U.S.

The court issued a statement on Tuesday pushing back against Washington, warning that measures punishing judges, prosecutors and staff for carrying out their mandate “undermine the rule of law” and put the international legal order at risk.

Netanyahu, who is wanted by the court for allegedly using starvation as a method of warfare and intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population of Gaza, applauded Washington’s move, branding the ICC a “kangaroo court” and praising Rubio for making clear that its officials would “face consequences.”

President Donald Trump dropped a political bombshell on the Korean peninsula this week.

But security officials say the president’s threats to curtail a major military exercise with South Korea will do little to undermine the detente between Seoul and Pyongyang.

Trump’s declaration Sunday that he would instruct the Pentagon to cut back on annual drills sent Seoul’s leaders scrambling to repair the damage. But the president appears more focused on pushing for investment from the country than trying to upend defenses against North Korea’s nuclear threat. And that means security on the world’s most militarized border hasn’t significantly changed.

The U.S. has more than 28,000 troops stationed on the peninsula, along with thick layers of air defenses. It has worked hand in glove with the Korean military for decades, a powerful joint force that works closely at every level. The border between a nuclear-armed North Korea and the U.S. ally to its south is a case study in mutually assured destruction. And top commanders in Seoul and Washington remain in tight contact.

“I don’t think this is cataclysmic,” said Sydney Seiler, former national intelligence officer for North Korea at the National Intelligence Council.

Defense officials were tight-lipped about what Trump’s announcement would mean in terms of concrete changes to military exercises. The Pentagon would only say that it is “is actively working on executing the commander-in-chief’s directive.”

Trump’s order, and his praise of dictator North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s “unthreatening and respectful” behavior, came days after the secretive nation launched its second ballistic missile test in a week. It flew over 430 miles before landing just outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone.

Some American lawmakers said the optics were horrible, particularly Trump’s seeming desire to appease a totalitarian regime.

“Kim Jong Un has won a propaganda victory and South Korea, one of our strongest allies, has been punished for no reason beyond Trump’s ego,” said Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee. “China and Russia are watching how easily this president abandons America’s allies, and they will remember it the next time they test us.”

The order affects a major exercise, Ulchi Freedom Shield, a staple of the alliance since it was first held in 1976. The drills this year were scheduled to begin Monday and encompass 14 different exercises over 11 days, ranging from cyber warfare to defending against drone attacks and GPS jamming. Officials are especially worried that North Korea received Russian technologies and know-how about electronic jamming after it sent tens of thousands of troops to help Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“The alliance will manage through, [although] this is clearly a rough patch,” said Victor Cha, a former National Security Council official during the George W. Bush administration and now Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Trump’s criticism of South Korea is particularly surprising because it’s a departure from comments by top Pentagon officials, who have repeatedly praised Seoul for increasing defense spending.

Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby called South Korea “a model ally” in a January speech in Seoul, and lauded its commitment to the alliance. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also praised the relationship several times this year, including when his South Korean counterpart visited the Pentagon in May.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Tuesday sought to soothe concerns over a rift. He said in a Cabinet meeting that “a strong alliance makes the foundation of security stronger, and strengthening our own capabilities increases our value and necessity as an ally.”

Many officials remain puzzled about why Trump would abruptly curtail an annual exercise that has taken place reliably for 50 years. There’s some precedent. He had railed against expensive exercises in South Korea during his first term and the Pentagon did scale back some large joint operations. But Ulchi Freedom Shield is a cornerstone of the military-to-military relationship.

The effort — a combination of a tabletop, virtual event and physical exercises — will continue in some form. But U.S. officials indicated that military leadership is trying to find ways to modify the event to meet the president’s demands. And the announcement underscores that American support remains at the whim of an unpredictable president.

Some of the president’s motivation is likely financial. South Korea pledged last year to invest $350 billion in the U.S., but Trump officials believe its government is slow-walking its commitment, POLITICO has reported.

“The thing about Trump is it’s all very transactional,” said Cha. “So if they announce a first tranche of investments, he’ll be fine, right?”

But Asian allies are closely watching whether the distancing from traditional backers will continue, particularly movement of some critical American military assets out of the Pacific region. The USS George Washington aircraft carrier left port in Tokyo this month and is heading west. It will presumably go to the Middle East and replace the beleaguered USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, which is on the ninth month of an extended deployment.

The Pentagon relocated some elements of the THAAD missile defense system earlier this year from South Korea as part of a wider shift to the Middle East.

Lawmakers are also watching warily. Congress voted last year to restrict the Pentagon from reducing troop levels on the Korean peninsula below 28,500 unless the Pentagon certifies doing so is in the national interest and conducted after consultation with South Korea and other allies.

Lawmakers appear poised to extend those restrictions again in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act.

“Reduced training hurts American preparedness too,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). “If we have moral clarity, then we’d treat [South Korea] as our ally and know North Korea is a dictatorship and slave labor state. … The president is wrong here.”

Conor O’Brien and Leo Shane contributed to this report.

President Donald Trump is waiting for Iran to cave to his economic pressure. Tehran may be willing to wait even longer.

Even as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent promises a level of economic isolation “never seen before,” former Trump administration officials, U.S. ambassadors and other Middle East experts are skeptical that tightening the economic vise will force Iran to relinquish its desire to toll ships passing through the State of Hormuz and make the other concessions Trump is demanding to bring an end to the war.

“It’s an attrition campaign, and I am sure Treasury tweaks this or that to fill gaps or expand coverage of sanctions,” said James Jeffrey, a former ambassador who served in the Middle East during three presidential administrations, including Trump’s first term. “But, it’s hard to believe [there will be] something decisive after 20 years of U.S. sanctions and Iranian experience of going around them.”

It’s an acknowledgement that underscores the asymmetry of the situation. The Trump administration is staring down a consequential midterm election amid an unpopular war that has sent oil prices back up to roughly $90 a barrel and helped push long-term borrowing costs to their highest level in nearly two decades as hope dims that a peace deal is near.

Iran’s leaders, meanwhile, see the conflict as existential, giving Tehran reason to absorb the extraordinary economic pain rather than accept terms it believes could imperil the regime — especially as U.S. inflation remains elevated and treasuries sell off.

The yield on 30-year U.S. government bonds, a figure Trump has in the past been attuned to, jumped on Tuesday to its highest level since just before the global financial crisis.

The increase in the yield to its highest level in nearly two decades isn’t solely because of the six-month war; global fuel shortages and broader instability have kept energy prices higher for longer, increasing the threat of persistent inflation. And that’s heaped even more risk on global bond markets that have repeatedly blanched at Trump-related shocks.

“We are in a situation where we’re spending more and more to finance more and more,” said Julia Coronado, founder of MacroPolicy Perspectives. And the war has created “a riskier world full of more frictions, full of more supply shocks.”

Iran’s outsized incentive to muscle through the pain is partly why some former administration officials doubt that the naval blockade, while unprecedented in its scale in the modern era or whatever new strategies Bessent may unveil, will change Iran’s calculus.

“I think the economic pressure would need to hit them in new ways we haven’t seen so far to change the mindset of the regime,” said one former Trump administration official, granted anonymity to candidly assess the impact of the U.S.’s economic pressure campaign.

The administration has yet to indicate what further action it plans to take, but options include going after major Chinese banks that facilitate Iran’s oil trade, expand secondary sanctions on countries doing business with Iran and confiscating Iranian assets under U.S. jurisdiction instead of just freezing them.

Iranian leaders publicly mocked U.S. efforts to sanction them into submission.

“Americans think squeezing Iran harder will win concessions that were never part of the agreement,” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of Iran’s parliament, posted on X Tuesday.

“Bessent and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth are way out of their league,” he wrote. “Stop waiting for the clown crew to pull a rabbit out of their hat and clean up the mess you made.”

White House aides, however, continue to contend that the leverage is on its side.

“The crushing sanctions and one of the most successful blockades that have crippled Iran’s economy and has left Iran completely broke,” said one administration official, granted anonymity to share the U.S.’s thinking. “There are many levers the president can crank harder in the weeks and months ahead.”

In the half-year since the Iran war began, the president has deployed an array of pressure tactics to choke Iran economically, including physically preventing the country from selling its most important export — oil — as part of an ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports. The administration has also sanctioned foreign buyers of Iranian oil, targeted the country’s shadow fleet of ships that ferries it and sought to cut the country off from the financial networks it uses to move money.

That economic pressure has sent Iran’s economy, which was already troubled before the war, into a deeper tailspin. Now, Iran is grappling with year-over-year inflation of 88 percent, long lines and rationing at gas pumps and food prices that have more than doubled.

But those who have worked on previous Iran negotiations say that’s far from enough to get the regime to cave, especially after six months of U.S. bombing that has killed, by Tehran’s own measure, more than 3,000 Iranians.

“It’s undeniable that there is economic pressure. The question is whether there is a breaking point, and I would say for a regime that is fighting for its life and has never hesitated to transfer economic pain to its population, there is no breaking point,” said Ali Vaez, the International Crisis Group’s Iran project director, who helped work to bridge differences between Iran and world powers during negotiations over the 2015 nuclear agreement.

Yet Trump continued to project patience on Tuesday, signaling that he was prepared to let the pressure campaign play out.

“There are no talks or conversations going on, or scheduled, with the Islamic Republic of Iran. The Naval Blockade remains in full force and effect. The Hormuz Strait is open and operating. All water mines have been removed or detonated. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

A senior White House official, granted anonymity to discuss the situation in Iran, insisted that Iran will cave long before the pain in the U.S. or world markets become intolerable.

“Ultimately we want a deal, but in the interim, the Iranian economy is tanking … people are lining up for gas, just for a half gallon of gas. And there’s a lot of civil unrest going on in Iran, that’s not being played on the news for whatever reason,” the official said late last week. “We’re fine if that’s the route they want to take.”

Still, there are signs inside the White House that the economic impacts are a growing concern. Vice President JD Vance last week said on Fox News that the administration’s first goal in the Iran war was to “keep oil and gas cheap for Americans all over the country.” The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly insisted voters will bear the pain of higher gas prices for an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The voters have a more dyspeptic view. A Reuters/Ipsos survey released this week showed Trump’s approval rating at 33 percent, the lowest level of his presidency. Roughly 80 percent of Americans — 87 percent of Democrats and 71 percent of Republicans — think U.S. involvement in Iran “will go on for an extended period of time,” the poll found.

But some former Trump administration officials, however, are holding out hope that patience will be rewarded and that the administration’s economic pressure campaign will work, in part because they see the other options on the table, including putting U.S. boots on the ground in Iran, as politically untenable.

Fred Fleitz, Trump’s former National Security Council chief of staff and vice chair of the American First Policy Institute’s American Security, predicted that the U.S. could be “dealing with a different Iran” in 30 to 60 days.

“I think patience is the best approach,” Fleitz said. “I don’t believe that a large-scale military attack right now is going to make a difference in changing the regime’s position, and I strongly oppose the idea of seizing Kharg Island or sending in American troops. The American people don’t want that. That would really bog us down in a quagmire.”

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BERLIN —Senior conservative and social-democrat lawmakers in Germany’s governing coalition are urging the EU to sanction Israel’s Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir after he called for nightly targeted killings in Gaza.

“I think targeted killings should be carried out in Gaza, remove 30, 40 [people] every night,” said Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, in a podcast episode released last Saturday. “Not just those who pose an immediate threat. No, there are people there who are not worthy of life. They shouldn’t live. They’re not even people.”

The comments drew an unusually sharp response from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives.

“Ben-Gvir’s inhumane remarks can only be condemned,” Jürgen Hardt, foreign policy spokesperson for the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union parliamentary group, told POLITICO. “The EU should sanction him as a sign of the universal validity of human dignity and human rights.”

Hardt went further, saying he was convinced an Israeli government without Ben-Gvir or fellow far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich would bring Europe and Israel closer together.

Germany’s Social Democrats struck a similar tone. Adis Ahmetović, the party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said the two ministers had shocked international opinion well before their latest statements, and urged the German government to support sanctions against both.

The criticism extended across the political spectrum.

The Left’s Dietmar Bartsch called Ben-Gvir’s remarks “deeply inhumane,” and urged Berlin and Brussels to consider sanctions, including an entry ban. Markus Frohnmaier, the far-right Alternative for Germany party’s foreign policy spokesperson, said calling for the indiscriminate killing of people who posed no immediate threat crossed “a clear line.” Green Member of Parliament Marlene Schönberger branded Ben-Gvir a “far-right extremist” and said his comments were “deeply inhumane,” adding that they had “nothing whatsoever” to do with Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens.

The statements mark a significant shift in Berlin. Germany has repeatedly pushed back against EU measures targeting Israel, including proposed sanctions on Ben-Gvir in June and, as recently as last month, restrictions on trade with illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

EU sanctions require unanimity, giving Berlin considerable sway over whether the bloc can move.

Merz’s government has not yet followed the lawmakers’ lead. The Foreign Ministry declined to take a position Monday, while some in government fear sanctioning Ben-Gvir just weeks before Israel’s Oct. 27 election could play into his hands.

German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul will meet his EU counterparts in Ireland on Sept. 1 and 2, where Ben-Gvir’s remarks and the war in Gaza are likely to loom over discussions.

Maximilian Heimerzheim contributed to reporting.

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